V) Uncouth
tommyb
Registrant
(a chapter)
__________
(late summer, early fall, 2015)
She'd stepped out from the other side of the bus station's brick building. Its concrete standing short, not tall, within Ashe's downtown, gone ghost town, at Sunday dusk. Long, golden legs in soft blue shorts, below a flimsy tank top.
"Well, if it ain't--"
'Cept she looks at me.
She sits down by the bus stop's sign, silent, tending to her phone.
'Something 'bout short, blonde hair, on bare neck and shoulders, 'want to graze the skin of her shoulder, 'want to pull things with teeth, cup, and pick up.
"You get off work..."
"Yes," she says, in her smooth auto. "You?"
"Grocery," 'said with a wink.
The way she's being, the way she is, 'something super-effeminate about certain ones, super-intelligent, only in a private way. Royal'd said, 'careful to not end up with a lipstick. We rarely spoke like that, instead ending up in conversation, until it's asked why it's built into the human condition, any sexual abuse, sexual assault, or rape victim knows to stay away from the female gender. Then Royal suddenly gaping. That's the thing about our generation, we weren't growing up to be sluts and f___boys. He'd looked more concerned than pissed.
Why won't she really look at me, 'cept with that sly question mark of an expression. Why 'she acting so in-her-own-world, like she's enjoying my innocence. 'Least our stolen glances occur, only with more effortless stealth, despite this mischievous smile she always falls for, calling it wicked. 'No point feeling possessive, she'd pick up on it, then ignore me in some way she'd call 'feminism.' One thing she could not tolerate: insecurity, the concept too foreign. Maybe she's annoyed, for handling trolling permanently. The stalked-online can attempt to make the terms m_f_ and masterb__ synonymous, while the troll can never make sense of the language, no matter the fancy diplomas. 'Want to tell her: ...'worked didn't it... 'mistook it for Egon Schiele, after Dragonette, the musician, had taught, never reading your own reviews. "It's a luminati trick," he'd said. We're all still safe.
"Car's in the shop," she says with her soft smile.
Again.
A man steps up, us three the only around. The pigeons, crowded in the empty street, flutter up as he says, "Either 'you, spare a cigarette?"
"Naw."
He pauses, as if insulted, then seems to notice the contrast of our skins.
"'Know the buses don't run this late on Sundays no more," he says.
She stands up.
"Okay."
He pauses. "Okay, then," he says, then steps away.
"Maybe we can share a cab..."
"Yeah," she says, digging in her purse. "I don't know the number."
"Right here," 'said, pulling paper from wallet.
She begins the call.
'Forgot how much I liked watching her. Never bored. She doesn't refer to me as her friend or boyfriend. 'Used to talk dirty to her. 'No good now. She used to yell at me. 'Couldn't tell Royal and Willahford loved me, 'couldn't love her. 'Not good to have gone crazy 'bout someone through all that. 'Worse now. Apparently no one can break through to the sphere of emotions around my beating heart, even with a tire iron. 'Worldly world ends where my skin begins. 'Supposed to stay away from her. 'Keep her safe. Even with the deceased all on me, at the Veteran's center, 'still the most talented at cruelty, having learned it clean, instead. The railroad remains safe. He'd played the Youtube video of him going into combat, again, in Afghanistan, while on 60 Minutes' cameras, later to air on national television. 'Remembered the Sunday night, not long after the return stateside. 'Upon recognizing the video from that episode, despite our brotherhood already burgeoning, 'went ghost.
'Upon entering the cab, nightfall, the driver already understands we're strangers, sharing a cab, at a bus stop that doesn't matter.
After he pulls off, but before nearing the tunnel, 'start wondering how it is, such raw emotion could be emanating off her, him not noticing ... some deep, profound, sadness, permeating everything.
"Ya'll didn't know 'bout Sundays, huh?" he says over the open windows, him slowly turning the wheel.
... Some sort of pride, wrapped up inside a thick cloud of soft, black-blue sadness.
"Yeah," he says. "When they know the college kids won't be out ..."
Once, she'd said something and noticed, 'hadn't understood her. The same level, and same emotions emanated, even from outside our apartments, just as complex, me smoking a cigarette on the back porch, staring at the food and water bowls she tended each evening, 'case any cats might need some. She'd demanded there was another girl, another life. She'd insisted she'd only make sense of normalcy.
"... so they'll change the schedule," the driver says. "Then back again ..."
Maybe it remains a mystery, if she were Royal or Willahford's sister, if the words, 'he's not good enough for you,' might occur. Maybe it remains some mental exercise. Something to do with honesty's requirement before love. 'Sad, 'cause the survivor might not truly believe, once falling in love has occurred, everything comes together, when facing, even the colors of her eyes darken, at the height of it.
He slows the cab shortly after the tunnel. No way she's grocery shopping right now, as she slowly steps away, under orange streetlights, towards the grocery's entrance. She's listening as the cab drives away.
__________
(Saturday, 25NOV2017)
(night, Sunday morning)
When detoxing off alcohol and, hopefully, cigarettes, 'best to have a plan: ten hours of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus maybe The Hobbit, if necessary, lots of green tea bags, and the understanding of not sleeping, even forty-eight hours in. 'Not good to happen to get used to drinking, before sleeping.
Maybe, Middle Earth is code for the time period when not only humanoids existed, but hobbits in southeast Asia, neanderthals, dwarves, in Europe, and remnants of where we came from before the separation with God: elves. And the ring is the sword in the stone. And Gandalf is Merlin. Maybe... Maybe the humanoid is a character among other characters, in a galaxy among galaxies, like stars in night sky.
'Wrote a joke about a girl so glamorous and educated, she picks up her baby, and bites into it, same as if it were an apple, freshly fallen from a tree, her guy unfazed, not missing a beat in conversation, but ... seems too vulgar. Especially when legal abortion remains an established marker in world history: 'the long list of women's rights, 'must've already been in place, regardless the civilization.
Maybe 'the ring,' is a remnant. Like the DNA in our cells. Like what the preachers call 'our nature.' Something like, one must be free of the dust, and one's fear of the dust, by realizing it's what's on the inside, only, that counts: the heart, now a soul in its temple, hopefully without Delilah having already cut his Sampson's hair. Maybe. Meanwhile, girls will tell you, it's their v_dge that counts. Procreation being as real as it gets. Maybe.
By the end of the trilogy, there remains many obvious pointing-outs of injustices against soldiers, by their own higher echelons, especially during World War I. 'Remains something, that scene where the two hobbits are silhouetted, and look like heroic boys running down the rupturing volcano, the ring now destroyed. Plus, what happens to Frodo at the end still haunts me. 'Just add it to the list. The Hobbit trilogy has to be a critique and simulation, or vice-versa, of World War II. Which I don't get, since The Hobbit happens first.
When using the cable's on-demand service, and watching a back episode of The View's 'day of hot topics,' expect long commercial breaks. Maybe it's good for housewives, able to complete whole tasks, during what's apparently called opinion television. 'Feels like I'm the quarterback or basketball captain in a highschool, like the Friday Night Lights of Kenley, with the personally-added duty of keeping an eye on the others, regardless social class. The View's twenty-year-old political apparratic structure makes for good vetting, concerning a female's American experience, not to mention others telling her what to think. 'Like in a high school, coming across the powerful group of girls, exchanging latest intel, while being spooky-Disney-esqe manipulative, 'cept none of us adolescent, and the highschool the real world, where all are not assumed equal, where advertising remains not the only form of propaganda. Capitalism can be ugly, even harmful, to those not at one-hundred percent, but the way it competes at you, assuming you're at one-hundred percent, is human dignity only known by us, regardless the ugly.
Behar's intelligent eyes 'cause me wondering, again, why the females earn their dead-fish-eyes earlier now, then how it was before, when plenty didn't have the dreaded dead-fish-eyes. 'Thought she was Jewish, which 'guess is antisemitic, 'don't know, but turns out she's Italian, so all's good, plus, 'met a woman older than her, 'also doesn't have her dead-fish-eyes yet and she's elderly. Even Woodruff doesn't have them. She's the one, 'best taught self-defense. Royal'd said, what I see as dead-fish-eyes, is shallowness. "Yeah, shallowness would come before unintelligence," I'd told him, filling my locker with rolled clothing from my bunk. "It's like watching a gender die."
Maybe the no-sleep involves substance abuse. 'Takes a year to get truly clean. When the federal coercive torture campaign began ground level, 'worst-case-scenario first crossed my mind. 'Oh sh_t: IPs.' 'Immediately swallowed tussin and continued stocking grocery, knowing, now no IPs could be gleaned off body language. The media side had been using winks -- ways of writing or speaking, only heard by an individual reader or listener. It's how Charlie Rose used his show to intimidate the women he'd abused, since the early nineties. And pocket words -- what FBI Director James Comey realized was occurring between the Hilary Clinton campaign and his own attorney generals: a code of words allowing communication. Otherwise known as corruption. He would go into it, live on national television, before the Senate Security Council. Nothing new. While being stalked, at thirteen, for six weeks, the stalker would whistle, at soccer games, at Walmart, for effect. Shortly before the Trump, Clinton election of 2016, Comey would fall on his sword, ensuring the FBI remained un-owned. By then, 2014, the idea IPs could be gleaned off body language seemed too risky to be ignored. ...Some time of it ...post-rehab.
'Going to get a pack of cigarettes now that Allison Janney has made me laugh, when her character was admonished for laughing regularly during Game of Thrones. She'd said, "It reminds me of high school."
__________
(night)
'Remained excruciating, but for the studying, watching the adolescent movie, Perks of Being a Wallflower. 'Pushed mute, put on the subtitles, and watched the story boards. Someone harmed but not-harmed, not-harmed, but harmed. Decent film. Not all S.A. are S.A. freaks, though they're looked out for. Keeping things trigger-less while alluding to the female gender remains an extraordinary undertaking, so many abusers being of that gender.
'Cept in the late eighties and the nineties, Hollywood insisted that any child from harm could not remain straight. 'Til this movie said otherwise. 'Same time, though nearing the end of the scandal, Doubt, starring Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, broke ground, the proof remaining in the pudding. As if thirty years of Catholic Priest pedophilia, remained subsidized by elites' ignorance, teaching ignorance.
What people are paid to say; what people are paid to write... 'Want to ask them, how much do you get paid to say that; how much do you get paid to write that...
__________
(Monday, 05MAR2018)
The back room of the general store might be large, but you'd never know; it remains packed. The green-steeled bins, squarish, one on top of the other, end at thirty-feet high, near a forty-foot ceiling. An aisle runs along the center, between the pallets and humans at the base of two enormous walls of cardboard boxes. In the aisle lies a manual conveyor belt, full of more cardboard boxes, soon to be placed on corresponding pallets, extending into the back of an eighteen-wheeler's boxcar. Inside, is the thrower, performing a two-to-three hour world-class athletic workout, unless that work ethic remains assumed. 'Heard this is how they unloaded boxcars for stores in Wilton, back when the cars were attached to trains.
The vernacular tends toward locker-room sh_t talking, amidst the clanking of the belt's metal rollers and the placing of heavy boxes against other heavy boxes, unless there are females around. This time the challenger isn't the usual jeeper's creepers inbred, but a quite normal eighteen-year-old, cocky as can be, with a huge grin on his face.
'Have sections assigned to me, with boxes that, if missed, are heard about farther down the line. The cocky kiddo has his own sections, only they are lesser, so he can walk to and fro into the back of the truck, keeping the line pushed down. So that, one minute he's near, the next, he's away.
"I hate to think," one of two brothers says, to anyone. "Or critically think."
"So how could gay sex be masculine?" says kiddo.
"I mean. I feel like they'd already have to have a strong bond between each other, like, from childhood, or something, and both individually devastated for individual reasons. And it would be temp--"
"--TEMPorary. I know, right?" he says.
"So what do you think about semiautomatics?" he says, before disappearing again, amidst the sounds of moving boxes.
He's asking due to another mass shooting, this time in a Florida highschool.
'Few minutes later:
"Okay. Do you know who Nelson Mandella is..."
"Yes," he says. "Probably."
"So his country, South Africa, understood the government, and the establishment, to be the nation, not the people, so the people took up arms. For years, it was an arms race, including semiautomatics. Mandella's people won, ending Apartheid. Hence, the right to bear arms."
"There's a place called South Africa?" he says cocky, smart alleck. "Really?"
__________
(Saturday, 10MAR2018)
(waking)
Even with relentless recollection and evocation, memories refuse to walk like humans, so that 'might run into him, my brother, his Romulus eyes.
'Remember the days of first walking, when Grace would show silent, little-boy-me the dangerous spots of her days. "But YOU're here now."
'Strange to have an older brother holding your hand each night through morning, and an older sister so happy you exist ... yet never strange at all.
'Only thing 'knew was naturally 'am not female. For one's first move to not be sheer violence. Abusive aggression. Cannibalistic mean-girl-ness. 'Had to be completely original, having no example.
'Still don't know why little-boy-me was hiding in those bushes amidst summer's orange dusk, below the five pecan trees, in the loud, heavy rain, watching the back door, the driveway, in-between. His Romulus eyes won't tell me.
__________
(Thursday, 12JUL2018)
(morning)
'Remains pleasant, the intel people want related through critiques, written word, radio, moving pictures, microwave radio waves, and such. No wonder there remains more talent and art in the world than an economy to house them.
Yesterday, at a NATO summit, the President played the drunk uncle everyone cordially puts up with, but ignores.
'Stir a cup of coffee, at the bistro, down from the apartment, wondering if I've ever been that guy.
He showed up, seemingly peeved by an iconic photograph concerning him and German Prime Minister Merkel, taken at the recent G7 summit. Then makes a scene at a breakfast, complaining about Merkel, using intel he did not understand, like he was grasping. 'Trying to start something.
'Something to be put up with, out of respect for the Americans, while personally ignored.
'Won't be the pleasant back and forth of subject matters, for a long time.
Bush Senior had a difficult job, leading a Republican White House past eight years to twelve. Clinton seemed to enjoy the idea of being a great man, to say the least. Bush Junior seemed to expect himself to be a great man, by right of birth. Obama certainly believed it, worried over it, and fell folly to it. Trump could have the most hubris, and go nowhere with it, even if reelected, maybe for the better.
Many forgot money remains symbolic paper, its worth based on credibility, mostly concerning whose soldiers remain most respected worldwide. No one owns the American dollar: even the wealthiest have no claim, many soldiers having come from poor families. All American citizens own the money, same as its credibility stems from us. The leverage of foreign negotiations remains literally the people. Notice how nations will leverage oil instead.
Kissinger once remarked upon Thailand in the most respectful way, noting how they produced exactly the right leader at exactly the right time, despite character, appearance, or behavior, somehow their expression remained a wise choice amidst the vast, constant-moving grid of foreign affairs.
'Stepping out of the bistro, 'past laborers in navy blue uniforms, talking over cigarettes:
"Trump sure tells them," one says.
"Yeah," says the other. "He keeps 'em shook up."
__________
(Saturday, 18AUG2018)
(night)
One Friday evening last spring. 'Was working, trying to figure out how, back in seventeen-seventy six, or seven, when freedom struck and broke ground -- it rang -- freeing the slaves, not to mention the women and children. Then something was wrong.
Same as 'had felt Royal's anger. Now 'felt his worry. Along with Willahford's stern seriousness. His inconsolable, unwavering remembrance. 'Kept insisting, the novel remains accidentally written, but they wouldn't listen. The pitch increased over live television and radio: pocket words, winks and all, even to the point, 'cept the Brits, of re-threatening American lives with that strange, familiar glee.
Like a premonition of consolation, quick, 'chose the next bus, riding to the station. Downtown remains an archipelago of luminous store-fronts and secretive clubs, spots unbeknown to other spots, only sharing the incandescence of ashey bowls, elixirs of paroxysm, and ubiquitious music. Everywhere: an enigmatic dance both exuberant and languid, episcopal and unequivocal, inviolable and irremediable, of dauntless concupisence, caprice, and joie de vivre. 'Not to mention the tourists. Only the old or old souls or both see the tenuous temerity of the acolytes' effrontery, their impious, impossibly interminable dirge, as if eternally dancing the edge of an invisible, calamitous precipice.
Sonorous, the A.A. life-story fills the red-doored church-basement, not a word heard, too busy seeing: Willahford and Royal, Royal and Willahford. Me, sitting in the back, on floor's tile, leaning against a column, all other chairs taken. Willahford, to the right, sitting on the empty folding-chair rack, his elbows on his knees, staring soberly at his shoes. Royal, directly across, beside the broom closet door, one leg flat, straight ahead, the other bent, his left arm resting, his eyes: blue, glittering diamonds of sorrowful anxiety. All meeting: 'just concentrating, making them all-the-way present, Royal's diamond eyes sparkling, holding on as they fade to outlines again, over and over, same as in the fields of God's Country.
Upon end-of-meeting, sped-walked for cigarettes around the corner from the now-always-impassive Fine Arts, with its ardent, lit-up, film posters.
"I know what you're doing!" someone: young, Caucasian, frat-boy type, maybe, yells over loud, buskers' music, toward me from across the street. "And I think it's awesome!"
At the counter of the smoke shop, the clerk gazes the same look as many in the county, aware of my always-being-stalked, even glancing toward the whoever stalker. Once back to my eyes, always the same look 'never understand, them being locals, me mere Carolinian, something like: "Isn't it sad, who we turned out to be."
After having my tarots read on the street by a beautiful girl across a beautiful cloth, if only to console the two of them, 'arrived home by late-night bus, wondering what was so important. What were they so concerned of... What on earth was going on out there.
__________
__________
(late summer, early fall, 2015)
She'd stepped out from the other side of the bus station's brick building. Its concrete standing short, not tall, within Ashe's downtown, gone ghost town, at Sunday dusk. Long, golden legs in soft blue shorts, below a flimsy tank top.
"Well, if it ain't--"
'Cept she looks at me.
She sits down by the bus stop's sign, silent, tending to her phone.
'Something 'bout short, blonde hair, on bare neck and shoulders, 'want to graze the skin of her shoulder, 'want to pull things with teeth, cup, and pick up.
"You get off work..."
"Yes," she says, in her smooth auto. "You?"
"Grocery," 'said with a wink.
The way she's being, the way she is, 'something super-effeminate about certain ones, super-intelligent, only in a private way. Royal'd said, 'careful to not end up with a lipstick. We rarely spoke like that, instead ending up in conversation, until it's asked why it's built into the human condition, any sexual abuse, sexual assault, or rape victim knows to stay away from the female gender. Then Royal suddenly gaping. That's the thing about our generation, we weren't growing up to be sluts and f___boys. He'd looked more concerned than pissed.
Why won't she really look at me, 'cept with that sly question mark of an expression. Why 'she acting so in-her-own-world, like she's enjoying my innocence. 'Least our stolen glances occur, only with more effortless stealth, despite this mischievous smile she always falls for, calling it wicked. 'No point feeling possessive, she'd pick up on it, then ignore me in some way she'd call 'feminism.' One thing she could not tolerate: insecurity, the concept too foreign. Maybe she's annoyed, for handling trolling permanently. The stalked-online can attempt to make the terms m_f_ and masterb__ synonymous, while the troll can never make sense of the language, no matter the fancy diplomas. 'Want to tell her: ...'worked didn't it... 'mistook it for Egon Schiele, after Dragonette, the musician, had taught, never reading your own reviews. "It's a luminati trick," he'd said. We're all still safe.
"Car's in the shop," she says with her soft smile.
Again.
A man steps up, us three the only around. The pigeons, crowded in the empty street, flutter up as he says, "Either 'you, spare a cigarette?"
"Naw."
He pauses, as if insulted, then seems to notice the contrast of our skins.
"'Know the buses don't run this late on Sundays no more," he says.
She stands up.
"Okay."
He pauses. "Okay, then," he says, then steps away.
"Maybe we can share a cab..."
"Yeah," she says, digging in her purse. "I don't know the number."
"Right here," 'said, pulling paper from wallet.
She begins the call.
'Forgot how much I liked watching her. Never bored. She doesn't refer to me as her friend or boyfriend. 'Used to talk dirty to her. 'No good now. She used to yell at me. 'Couldn't tell Royal and Willahford loved me, 'couldn't love her. 'Not good to have gone crazy 'bout someone through all that. 'Worse now. Apparently no one can break through to the sphere of emotions around my beating heart, even with a tire iron. 'Worldly world ends where my skin begins. 'Supposed to stay away from her. 'Keep her safe. Even with the deceased all on me, at the Veteran's center, 'still the most talented at cruelty, having learned it clean, instead. The railroad remains safe. He'd played the Youtube video of him going into combat, again, in Afghanistan, while on 60 Minutes' cameras, later to air on national television. 'Remembered the Sunday night, not long after the return stateside. 'Upon recognizing the video from that episode, despite our brotherhood already burgeoning, 'went ghost.
'Upon entering the cab, nightfall, the driver already understands we're strangers, sharing a cab, at a bus stop that doesn't matter.
After he pulls off, but before nearing the tunnel, 'start wondering how it is, such raw emotion could be emanating off her, him not noticing ... some deep, profound, sadness, permeating everything.
"Ya'll didn't know 'bout Sundays, huh?" he says over the open windows, him slowly turning the wheel.
... Some sort of pride, wrapped up inside a thick cloud of soft, black-blue sadness.
"Yeah," he says. "When they know the college kids won't be out ..."
Once, she'd said something and noticed, 'hadn't understood her. The same level, and same emotions emanated, even from outside our apartments, just as complex, me smoking a cigarette on the back porch, staring at the food and water bowls she tended each evening, 'case any cats might need some. She'd demanded there was another girl, another life. She'd insisted she'd only make sense of normalcy.
"... so they'll change the schedule," the driver says. "Then back again ..."
Maybe it remains a mystery, if she were Royal or Willahford's sister, if the words, 'he's not good enough for you,' might occur. Maybe it remains some mental exercise. Something to do with honesty's requirement before love. 'Sad, 'cause the survivor might not truly believe, once falling in love has occurred, everything comes together, when facing, even the colors of her eyes darken, at the height of it.
He slows the cab shortly after the tunnel. No way she's grocery shopping right now, as she slowly steps away, under orange streetlights, towards the grocery's entrance. She's listening as the cab drives away.
__________
(Saturday, 25NOV2017)
(night, Sunday morning)
When detoxing off alcohol and, hopefully, cigarettes, 'best to have a plan: ten hours of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, plus maybe The Hobbit, if necessary, lots of green tea bags, and the understanding of not sleeping, even forty-eight hours in. 'Not good to happen to get used to drinking, before sleeping.
Maybe, Middle Earth is code for the time period when not only humanoids existed, but hobbits in southeast Asia, neanderthals, dwarves, in Europe, and remnants of where we came from before the separation with God: elves. And the ring is the sword in the stone. And Gandalf is Merlin. Maybe... Maybe the humanoid is a character among other characters, in a galaxy among galaxies, like stars in night sky.
'Wrote a joke about a girl so glamorous and educated, she picks up her baby, and bites into it, same as if it were an apple, freshly fallen from a tree, her guy unfazed, not missing a beat in conversation, but ... seems too vulgar. Especially when legal abortion remains an established marker in world history: 'the long list of women's rights, 'must've already been in place, regardless the civilization.
Maybe 'the ring,' is a remnant. Like the DNA in our cells. Like what the preachers call 'our nature.' Something like, one must be free of the dust, and one's fear of the dust, by realizing it's what's on the inside, only, that counts: the heart, now a soul in its temple, hopefully without Delilah having already cut his Sampson's hair. Maybe. Meanwhile, girls will tell you, it's their v_dge that counts. Procreation being as real as it gets. Maybe.
By the end of the trilogy, there remains many obvious pointing-outs of injustices against soldiers, by their own higher echelons, especially during World War I. 'Remains something, that scene where the two hobbits are silhouetted, and look like heroic boys running down the rupturing volcano, the ring now destroyed. Plus, what happens to Frodo at the end still haunts me. 'Just add it to the list. The Hobbit trilogy has to be a critique and simulation, or vice-versa, of World War II. Which I don't get, since The Hobbit happens first.
When using the cable's on-demand service, and watching a back episode of The View's 'day of hot topics,' expect long commercial breaks. Maybe it's good for housewives, able to complete whole tasks, during what's apparently called opinion television. 'Feels like I'm the quarterback or basketball captain in a highschool, like the Friday Night Lights of Kenley, with the personally-added duty of keeping an eye on the others, regardless social class. The View's twenty-year-old political apparratic structure makes for good vetting, concerning a female's American experience, not to mention others telling her what to think. 'Like in a high school, coming across the powerful group of girls, exchanging latest intel, while being spooky-Disney-esqe manipulative, 'cept none of us adolescent, and the highschool the real world, where all are not assumed equal, where advertising remains not the only form of propaganda. Capitalism can be ugly, even harmful, to those not at one-hundred percent, but the way it competes at you, assuming you're at one-hundred percent, is human dignity only known by us, regardless the ugly.
Behar's intelligent eyes 'cause me wondering, again, why the females earn their dead-fish-eyes earlier now, then how it was before, when plenty didn't have the dreaded dead-fish-eyes. 'Thought she was Jewish, which 'guess is antisemitic, 'don't know, but turns out she's Italian, so all's good, plus, 'met a woman older than her, 'also doesn't have her dead-fish-eyes yet and she's elderly. Even Woodruff doesn't have them. She's the one, 'best taught self-defense. Royal'd said, what I see as dead-fish-eyes, is shallowness. "Yeah, shallowness would come before unintelligence," I'd told him, filling my locker with rolled clothing from my bunk. "It's like watching a gender die."
Maybe the no-sleep involves substance abuse. 'Takes a year to get truly clean. When the federal coercive torture campaign began ground level, 'worst-case-scenario first crossed my mind. 'Oh sh_t: IPs.' 'Immediately swallowed tussin and continued stocking grocery, knowing, now no IPs could be gleaned off body language. The media side had been using winks -- ways of writing or speaking, only heard by an individual reader or listener. It's how Charlie Rose used his show to intimidate the women he'd abused, since the early nineties. And pocket words -- what FBI Director James Comey realized was occurring between the Hilary Clinton campaign and his own attorney generals: a code of words allowing communication. Otherwise known as corruption. He would go into it, live on national television, before the Senate Security Council. Nothing new. While being stalked, at thirteen, for six weeks, the stalker would whistle, at soccer games, at Walmart, for effect. Shortly before the Trump, Clinton election of 2016, Comey would fall on his sword, ensuring the FBI remained un-owned. By then, 2014, the idea IPs could be gleaned off body language seemed too risky to be ignored. ...Some time of it ...post-rehab.
'Going to get a pack of cigarettes now that Allison Janney has made me laugh, when her character was admonished for laughing regularly during Game of Thrones. She'd said, "It reminds me of high school."
__________
(night)
'Remained excruciating, but for the studying, watching the adolescent movie, Perks of Being a Wallflower. 'Pushed mute, put on the subtitles, and watched the story boards. Someone harmed but not-harmed, not-harmed, but harmed. Decent film. Not all S.A. are S.A. freaks, though they're looked out for. Keeping things trigger-less while alluding to the female gender remains an extraordinary undertaking, so many abusers being of that gender.
'Cept in the late eighties and the nineties, Hollywood insisted that any child from harm could not remain straight. 'Til this movie said otherwise. 'Same time, though nearing the end of the scandal, Doubt, starring Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, broke ground, the proof remaining in the pudding. As if thirty years of Catholic Priest pedophilia, remained subsidized by elites' ignorance, teaching ignorance.
What people are paid to say; what people are paid to write... 'Want to ask them, how much do you get paid to say that; how much do you get paid to write that...
__________
(Monday, 05MAR2018)
The back room of the general store might be large, but you'd never know; it remains packed. The green-steeled bins, squarish, one on top of the other, end at thirty-feet high, near a forty-foot ceiling. An aisle runs along the center, between the pallets and humans at the base of two enormous walls of cardboard boxes. In the aisle lies a manual conveyor belt, full of more cardboard boxes, soon to be placed on corresponding pallets, extending into the back of an eighteen-wheeler's boxcar. Inside, is the thrower, performing a two-to-three hour world-class athletic workout, unless that work ethic remains assumed. 'Heard this is how they unloaded boxcars for stores in Wilton, back when the cars were attached to trains.
The vernacular tends toward locker-room sh_t talking, amidst the clanking of the belt's metal rollers and the placing of heavy boxes against other heavy boxes, unless there are females around. This time the challenger isn't the usual jeeper's creepers inbred, but a quite normal eighteen-year-old, cocky as can be, with a huge grin on his face.
'Have sections assigned to me, with boxes that, if missed, are heard about farther down the line. The cocky kiddo has his own sections, only they are lesser, so he can walk to and fro into the back of the truck, keeping the line pushed down. So that, one minute he's near, the next, he's away.
"I hate to think," one of two brothers says, to anyone. "Or critically think."
"So how could gay sex be masculine?" says kiddo.
"I mean. I feel like they'd already have to have a strong bond between each other, like, from childhood, or something, and both individually devastated for individual reasons. And it would be temp--"
"--TEMPorary. I know, right?" he says.
"So what do you think about semiautomatics?" he says, before disappearing again, amidst the sounds of moving boxes.
He's asking due to another mass shooting, this time in a Florida highschool.
'Few minutes later:
"Okay. Do you know who Nelson Mandella is..."
"Yes," he says. "Probably."
"So his country, South Africa, understood the government, and the establishment, to be the nation, not the people, so the people took up arms. For years, it was an arms race, including semiautomatics. Mandella's people won, ending Apartheid. Hence, the right to bear arms."
"There's a place called South Africa?" he says cocky, smart alleck. "Really?"
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(Saturday, 10MAR2018)
(waking)
Even with relentless recollection and evocation, memories refuse to walk like humans, so that 'might run into him, my brother, his Romulus eyes.
'Remember the days of first walking, when Grace would show silent, little-boy-me the dangerous spots of her days. "But YOU're here now."
'Strange to have an older brother holding your hand each night through morning, and an older sister so happy you exist ... yet never strange at all.
'Only thing 'knew was naturally 'am not female. For one's first move to not be sheer violence. Abusive aggression. Cannibalistic mean-girl-ness. 'Had to be completely original, having no example.
'Still don't know why little-boy-me was hiding in those bushes amidst summer's orange dusk, below the five pecan trees, in the loud, heavy rain, watching the back door, the driveway, in-between. His Romulus eyes won't tell me.
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(Thursday, 12JUL2018)
(morning)
'Remains pleasant, the intel people want related through critiques, written word, radio, moving pictures, microwave radio waves, and such. No wonder there remains more talent and art in the world than an economy to house them.
Yesterday, at a NATO summit, the President played the drunk uncle everyone cordially puts up with, but ignores.
'Stir a cup of coffee, at the bistro, down from the apartment, wondering if I've ever been that guy.
He showed up, seemingly peeved by an iconic photograph concerning him and German Prime Minister Merkel, taken at the recent G7 summit. Then makes a scene at a breakfast, complaining about Merkel, using intel he did not understand, like he was grasping. 'Trying to start something.
'Something to be put up with, out of respect for the Americans, while personally ignored.
'Won't be the pleasant back and forth of subject matters, for a long time.
Bush Senior had a difficult job, leading a Republican White House past eight years to twelve. Clinton seemed to enjoy the idea of being a great man, to say the least. Bush Junior seemed to expect himself to be a great man, by right of birth. Obama certainly believed it, worried over it, and fell folly to it. Trump could have the most hubris, and go nowhere with it, even if reelected, maybe for the better.
Many forgot money remains symbolic paper, its worth based on credibility, mostly concerning whose soldiers remain most respected worldwide. No one owns the American dollar: even the wealthiest have no claim, many soldiers having come from poor families. All American citizens own the money, same as its credibility stems from us. The leverage of foreign negotiations remains literally the people. Notice how nations will leverage oil instead.
Kissinger once remarked upon Thailand in the most respectful way, noting how they produced exactly the right leader at exactly the right time, despite character, appearance, or behavior, somehow their expression remained a wise choice amidst the vast, constant-moving grid of foreign affairs.
'Stepping out of the bistro, 'past laborers in navy blue uniforms, talking over cigarettes:
"Trump sure tells them," one says.
"Yeah," says the other. "He keeps 'em shook up."
__________
(Saturday, 18AUG2018)
(night)
One Friday evening last spring. 'Was working, trying to figure out how, back in seventeen-seventy six, or seven, when freedom struck and broke ground -- it rang -- freeing the slaves, not to mention the women and children. Then something was wrong.
Same as 'had felt Royal's anger. Now 'felt his worry. Along with Willahford's stern seriousness. His inconsolable, unwavering remembrance. 'Kept insisting, the novel remains accidentally written, but they wouldn't listen. The pitch increased over live television and radio: pocket words, winks and all, even to the point, 'cept the Brits, of re-threatening American lives with that strange, familiar glee.
Like a premonition of consolation, quick, 'chose the next bus, riding to the station. Downtown remains an archipelago of luminous store-fronts and secretive clubs, spots unbeknown to other spots, only sharing the incandescence of ashey bowls, elixirs of paroxysm, and ubiquitious music. Everywhere: an enigmatic dance both exuberant and languid, episcopal and unequivocal, inviolable and irremediable, of dauntless concupisence, caprice, and joie de vivre. 'Not to mention the tourists. Only the old or old souls or both see the tenuous temerity of the acolytes' effrontery, their impious, impossibly interminable dirge, as if eternally dancing the edge of an invisible, calamitous precipice.
Sonorous, the A.A. life-story fills the red-doored church-basement, not a word heard, too busy seeing: Willahford and Royal, Royal and Willahford. Me, sitting in the back, on floor's tile, leaning against a column, all other chairs taken. Willahford, to the right, sitting on the empty folding-chair rack, his elbows on his knees, staring soberly at his shoes. Royal, directly across, beside the broom closet door, one leg flat, straight ahead, the other bent, his left arm resting, his eyes: blue, glittering diamonds of sorrowful anxiety. All meeting: 'just concentrating, making them all-the-way present, Royal's diamond eyes sparkling, holding on as they fade to outlines again, over and over, same as in the fields of God's Country.
Upon end-of-meeting, sped-walked for cigarettes around the corner from the now-always-impassive Fine Arts, with its ardent, lit-up, film posters.
"I know what you're doing!" someone: young, Caucasian, frat-boy type, maybe, yells over loud, buskers' music, toward me from across the street. "And I think it's awesome!"
At the counter of the smoke shop, the clerk gazes the same look as many in the county, aware of my always-being-stalked, even glancing toward the whoever stalker. Once back to my eyes, always the same look 'never understand, them being locals, me mere Carolinian, something like: "Isn't it sad, who we turned out to be."
After having my tarots read on the street by a beautiful girl across a beautiful cloth, if only to console the two of them, 'arrived home by late-night bus, wondering what was so important. What were they so concerned of... What on earth was going on out there.
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